Vale board OK’s sale of fertilizer unit to Mosaic — report

Vale board OK’s sale of fertilizer unit — report

Cecilia Jamasmie

October 27, 2016

Mining.com

The board of directors at Brazilian mining giant Vale (NYSE:VALE), the world’s largest iron ore producer, has approved the sale of the firm’s fertilizer business, amid a global oversupply of potash that has caused prices to tumble in the past year, leading to layoffs and mine closures across the sector.

The company’s plants in Cubatão, São Paulo, are said to begoing to Norway’s Yara International.

With the deal, Vale — the biggest producer of phosphate in Brazil, which in turn is the planet’s fifth-biggest user of fertilizer — is expected to fetch about $ 3.5 billion.

The Rio de Janeiro-based company had long vowed to hold on to world-class operations in these and other key areas.

But in February, it shocked market analysts by announcing it was putting its core assets on the block in a bid to reduce its net debt to $15 billion within 18 months, from $25.23 billion at the end of 2015.

The company’s net operating revenue increased 13% in the period to $7.3 billion. Such revenue recovery came amid higher iron ore prices, which reached an average $65.50 per tonne in the quarter, versus $62.11 in the same period last year.

It definitely wasn’t helped by the fertilizer business, as prices for potash have been on a downward spiral. They began their decline four years ago, as weak crop prices and currencies weakness pinched demand. Potash has also suffered from increased competition following the breakup in 2013 of a Russian-Belarusian marketing cartel that previously helped limit supply.

The industry’s woes have seen a pick-up in M&A and last month Canada’s Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (TSX:POT) (NYSE: POT), the world’s largest producer of the fertilizer by capacity, and smaller rival Agrium (TSX:AGU) (NYSE: AGU) agreed to an all-share merger, creating the world’s largest crop-nutrient supplier worth about $36 billion.